View From a New Vrindaban Ridge

An unofficial, eclectic, mostly tangential, view of aspiring devotee life.
Best viewed with Sense of Humor 8.0 or higher.
Cows may come, cows may go, but the bull is always here.

Sunday, July 31, 2005

Flatlanders

I have been following the dialogue on the apparent inconsistency between the empiric, observable material world and the description of the material world given in the Srimad Bhagvatam, Canto 5. I am in my own procrastinating, undisciplined way, eventually going to write an article about why the two differ, and it will be based largely on the Flatlanders, a book written about a 100 years ago that still is widely used and quoted in physics circles. Here is an animated site with music (which means slow loading for us underprivelidged, miles of copper wire from the fiber optic lines, dialup internet users) that covers the basic premise.

Friday, July 29, 2005

Mother Earth Assumes the Shape of a Cow

Once the world was overburdened by the unnecessary defense force of different kings, who were actually demons but were posing themselves as the royal order. At that time, the whole world became perturbed, and the predominating deity of this earth, known as Bhumi, went to see Lord Brahma to tell of her calamities due to the demoniac kings. Bhumi assumed the shape of a cow and presented herself before Lord Brahma with tears in her eyes. She was bereaved and was weeping just to invoke the lord's compassion. She related the calamitous position of the earth, and after hearing this, Lord Brahma became much aggrieved, and he at once started for the ocean of milk, where Lord Visnu resides. Lord Brahma was accompanied by all the demigods headed by Lord Siva, and Bhumi also followed. Arriving on the shore of the milk ocean, Lord Brahma began to pacify Lord Visnu, who formerly saved the earthly planet by assuming the transcendental form of a boar.

A devotee should not see anything as being separate from the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Krsna. Ether, fire, air, water, earth, the sun and other luminaries, all living beings, the directions, trees and other plants, the rivers and oceans -- whatever a devotee experiences he should consider to be an expansion of Krsna.
Thus seeing everything that exists within creation as the body of the Supreme Lord, Hari, the devotee should offer his sincere respects to the entire expansion of the Lord's body.

Rabindranath Tagore:

A mind all logic
is like a knife all blade.
The hand that uses it will bleed.